Last week we noted that a report published in English on the BBC News website and in Arabic on the BBC Arabic website misled readers with the following statement: [emphasis added]
“He works for Addameer, a Palestinian legal aid and prisoners’ rights group that was designated a terrorist organisation by Israeli military in October 2021 along with five other Palestinian civil society groups. The military said they were linked to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a Palestinian militant group that Israel considers a terrorist organisation.”
As we clarified at the time:
“In fact Addameer and the other five PFLP linked NGOs were designated by Israel’s Ministry of Defence rather than by “Israeli military”.”
CAMERA UK submitted a complaint to the BBC relating to both versions of the article, pointing out that – as in the UK – the decision to proscribe organisations is taken by the government, not the armed forces.
The BBC’s response to that complaint on December 8th included the following:
“You raise a fair point and we have amended this line in the story to now refer to “the Israeli defence ministry”.”
However, while the English language version of the report was indeed amended accordingly (but without a footnote to inform readers of the correction), the Arabic language version was not.
CAMERA UK therefore submitted another complaint requesting a correction to that article and it too was subsequently amended on December 12th.
The bbc is a government run mouthpiece for their ideology and beholden to them for its funding.